Should You Be Worried About Ralph Lauren Corp (RL)’s Sinking Smart Money Ownership?

Since Ralph Lauren Corp (NYSE:RL) has witnessed falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there is a sect of funds that slashed their full holdings heading into Q4. Intriguingly, John Lykouretzos’ Hoplite Capital Management dumped the largest investment of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $51.1 million in stock. Alexander Mitchell’s fund, Scopus Asset Management, also sold off its stock, about $50.5 million worth of RL shares. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 7 funds heading into Q4.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Ralph Lauren Corp (NYSE:RL). We will take a look at Sabre Corp (NASDAQ:SABR), Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL), InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (ADR) (NYSE:IHG), and W.R. Berkley Corporation (NYSE:WRB). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to RL’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $882 million. That figure was $574 million in RL’s case. Sabre Corp (NASDAQ:SABR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (ADR) (NYSE:IHG) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Ralph Lauren Corp (NYSE:RL) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds have better recent sentiment for. In this regard FL might be a better candidate to consider a long position in.

Disclosure: None